


Garden Spider

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, More dead arthropods??, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: “I’ve upset you. Your little heart is goingk like a bird.”
Relationships: Lady Margolotta & Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Garden Spider

There was a spider crawling across the table, small as the half moon of a fingernail. It made its way industriously, seemingly purposefully across the depth of the metal surface.

Lady Margolotta reached across the table and delicately squished the spider beneath a finger.

Beads of rain shone like drops of silver on the wool of the Patrician’s robes. He didn’t look at her.

“I’ve upset you. Your little heart is goingk like a bird.” Truth be told, her friend’s heart had sounded like there was something electrically wrong with it for some time. Vampires in the city must have noticed. But it wasn’t surprising. The odds had been against his survival. How fearful and precious existence must be when every impact threatened to shatter. To be a vampire was to expect to die many times before your death.

“It does that,” Lord Vetinari said coolly. “It was only a garden spider.”

“It vould make you sick if it bit you.”

“Why would it do that.” He did not add a question mark to the end of the sentence.

“Out of fear of ze deadly creature with fifty times its lifespan.”

“It dies for that?”

“It vas only a garden spider.” Margolotta said. But hadn’t she seen this man’s aunt nearly in tears over a dead wasp? It’s dead, it can’t hurt you, she had said—It’s dead, my grief sees reflections, she had responded. This wasn’t a question of undead versus living perspective. It was a question of what you saw in the colors of a soap bubble. Vetinari did not especially care that the point where iridescence was lost was two molecules thick, the depth of a single wavelength of light. He cared that they were beautiful. He cared that Saponaria was also the goddess of social welfare.


End file.
